To & Fro

It’s impossible to be vegan because it’s impossible to totally refrain from harming other life.

You’re right, it is impossible to totally refrain from harm. Veganism is about reducing harm in ways practical to the situation, particularly reducing direct or indirect intentional violence. Like many concepts such as ‘anarchy’, veganism can be open to interpretation and manifest in varying forms. And since it’s impossible to totally refrain from causing harm, I’ve decided to be a mass murderer.

There is no such thing as body purity. Things that have harmed animals are part of nature and modernism and a part of your body.

Vegans’ bodies are less of a graveyard, but ethical vegans (as opposed to religious vegans like Jains) don’t strive to sanitize their bodies, for example realizing their bodies are natural hosts to many organisms.

Veganism was once the height of my moralism, but I have no interest in my diet anymore because I realized I was using veganism to make me feel supreme over other humans.

Ethical vegans today suffer a stereotypical perception in their role on the front line of a social movement – ‘snobby do-gooders’. While some vegans may start believing the accusation, for most vegans the compassionate motives remain primary.

How so? Even vegans who believe some animals may feel less pain or are less sentient still remain respectful of all animals. Further, vegans tend to take more action to protect Earth and cause less suffering than nonvegan counterparts. Imagine the reduction in harm a vegan primitivist would have.

Vegans generallty live life as peacefully as they can. They choose to be as respectful and gentle as practical to all living creatures. Perhaps not coincidentally, this manner of living tends to help humans to thrive.

I realize that the main reason I was vegan was as a show of strong will over myself, maintaining self-sacrificing discipline, that was more about my egoism than my altruism. Now I believe that I am a part of the world and fate.

Vegans can be a part of the natural world without exploiting animals. Fate can be molded. Veganism is a pursuit of living in harmony with the natural world.

Plants have feelings too.

Since ‘food’ animals eat plants, you harm fewer plants by eating them directly.

There is no clear definition of ‘vegan’, whenever there is a good argument against it, the definition changes.

One could say the same about ‘anarchy’ or ‘primitivism’. In all things anarchy, meanings are created and interpreted in the living moment. That’s just how it goes, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

Veganism is not harm reduction. Harm reduction is not viable with veganism because it relies on agriculture which displaces and kills Earth’s natural life forms.

That’s why vegan primitivism is ideal. But whether living within or without ‘civilization’ veganism does less harm than the omnivore counterpart.

Veganism contradicts its own premises by supporting agriculture & industrialism which cause suffering to sentient life.

Two separate issues. Veganism does not necessarily equate to agriculture any more than omnivorism.

The real harm is agriculture, and without agriculture you must eat animals. A primitive vegan hominid nomadic gatherer is not plausible, and even if there were a case of it, it would be the minority.

In today’s modern world it’s hard to imagine any nomadic people thriving within an ecosystem for much longer, but analysis back into deep hominid history increasingly illustrate a theory of a hominid plant based diet. In today’s world much ecosystem revival & human population reduction would be required before humans could thrive primitively like our deep ancestors. So in now’s reality, the modern choice of a vegan, local, organic diet is the most harmonious diet for Earth.

Veganism harms wildlife habitat.

Not as much as the standard civilized diet.

Eating animals is the natural way for humans to be part of the world.

Human biology speaks strongly to our herbivore nature. What is also natural in a primitivist world is humans dying at the average age of 30 or 40 by something like diarrhea. Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it is worthy of advocacy.

A vegan world would be humans having no interaction with the world, remaining isolated, separate from it as to not harm it.

If humans revived ecosystems, reduced their population, and rediscovered their native habitat ranges, vegan hominids could thrive living within their ecosystem.

Natural life do not choose a diet for ethical reasons. To make dietary choices is to deny your animal self.

Sometimes animals change their dietary choices to adapt to environmental changes, and their new choices are less healthy for their bodies and their environments. The natural human diet may very well be plant based. Somebelieve nonhumanimals not only choose, but have ethics, though for many animals their instincts tend to override their ethical choices… just as with humans.

Choosing to not harm is anti-nature, self-deprecating.

Clearly humans are causing way more harm than is natural, the question is where to draw the line. What if a plant based diet is the deeply natural human diet? Even if not, what if time is here for humans to evolve their diet for their own survival and to strive to live in harmony?

In the real world animals live & die off of one another. Suffering is a natural phenomenon.

But that’s no justification for causing more suffering than needed.

Veganism is not humans’ natural diet.

Says whom? The most settled science on this question seems to point increasingly toward a natural plant based diet.

Veganism is an arbitrary thing that encourages people to live an illusion that they are helping the world when the harm they do still outweighs whatever benefit, if any.

All modern humans today, including vegans, can do good by ending destructive civilization, not breeding and working on reviving ecosystems. Vegans seem to have less arbitrary illusions than nonvegans.

Statistically vegans really do not save animals.

That reeks of untruth. Where did you get that from? Even so, if there’s an easily controllable choice of whether or not to needlessly exploit or harm an animal, why not make the least oppressive choice?

Veganism is pious & puritan.

This is an accusation thrown at anyone striving for betterment in opposition to the accuser and often the wrongheaded majority.

Humans do much more harm by overpopulating, so if you really want to reduce suffering, the main issue you should be spending energy on is reducing human population.

Everyone should work on reducing human population, vegans and nonvegans.

If you really want to help reduce harm, your energies would be more fruitful elsewhere.

Like where? Vegans would be more likely invest energies to help reduce harm than many.

You can still love an animal and be a part of the world by eating the animal.

Odd definition of ‘love’. Does that principle apply to all your relationships?

It’s impossible to live in the modern world without causing harm. That’s reality.

Yes, but that’s not an excuse to cause more harm needlessly.

If you really are opposed to harm, why would you not intervene when animals eat other animals?

No vegan wants all life to be vegan. Just humans. We accept nature.

Vegans are actually speciesist because they put their morality above other animals.

Being that humans have morality (and we don’t know whether other animals do or don’t), we have a responsibility to use it wisely and compassionately, with the best interest of Earth.

Vegans get stuck in dogmatism and excuse or remain blind to the harm they do.

No more so than others. In general, it seems vegans keep their eyes, minds, and hearts open fairly widely.

Circle of life.

Humans committing needless intentional violence against life with food choices (whether meat or big ag gmo monocrop) is not part of the harmony circle, especially in Earth’s Anthropocentric milieu.

Rewilding is incongruous with veganism.

First ecosystems need to be revived, human population lowered, then humans will have the environment to rediscover their natural habitat and rewild their beings.

A top goal of an Earth rewilding veganarcho-primitivist is to defend what little wild remains. Once a wild area is ‘developed’ it’s impossible to recover to its original state; hundreds or thousands of years of natural processes are erased in one fell swoop. I’ve grown a thick skin to the myriad of baseless nonveganarchist attacks on vegans, but the one that darts straight to my heart is ‘The rainforest is being cut down to grow soy. So much for vegans saving the planet!’

When staying with some southeast Venezuelan indigenous Pemon people living in the Gran Sabana along a forest edge, my mind entered an ethical frenzy when they asked if I wanted to help them harvest yucca, etc. from their forest farm. I reassured myself that as far as I could surmise, the Pemon population had been stable for hundreds of years, with little encroachment into the forest, and no evidence of onward expansion typical of colonizers. We were in agreement that enormous swaths of forest leveled for any crop is a crime of nature.

Most soybean deforestation targets tropical climate areas of South America, the Brazilian Cerrado region, Amazon Rainforest, Gran Chaco and the Atlantic Forest in particular. These regions are bursting with biodiversity and deforestation is quickly endangering plant and animal species. The USDA estimates that the area of Brazil razed for soy plantations will reach 30 million hectares by 2020, about the size of the Arizona. Over 80% of farmlands in the Paraguayan region of Gran Chaco are cropped with soy.

So where is all this soy going? As the largest source of protein for the world’s farmed animals, about 70% is fed to ‘livestock’. While edamame is obviously not the ‘natural’ food choice for human-bred cows and chickens, with Anthropocentric humans assessing so little value to even the most diverse wildlife habitats, soy is cheap. And with Anthropocentric humans assessing so little value to domesticated life as well, soy is effective. Soy and corn ‘help’ ‘livestock’ reach ‘market weight’ in record time. The National Cattleman’s Beef Association brags that the average cow on a feedlot will gain between 2-4 lbs/day, thanks to this oh so ‘special’ diet they are fed. Ah, the Anthropocentric values of soy.

Only 6% of soy is fed directly to humans, many of them nonvegans, mainly in Asia. The rest is converted into soybean oil. That’s right, deforestation soy is mainly consumed by ‘meat’ eating domesticated humans. WWF Germany found that if every human in Germany were to just lower their consumption of ‘meat’, just to the country’s domesticated human dietary guidelines, that would equate to 1.8 million acres of ‘agricultural land’, 825,000 hectares of which are specifically in South America.

I wonder, could it be that most anarchists who eat ‘meat’ are sourcing it from animals who are fed deforestation soy? If the anarchists who use soy deforestation as an attack on vegans are truly concerned about what remains of Earth’s pristine wild, are they going to now spew ‘The rainforest is being cut down to grow soy. Hope no one is buying meat from animals fed soy!’ ?

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“farming” wildlife”

I found you post “To and Fro” interesting and impressive and only have this to share…

When I lived in N. Wisconsin and Upper Michigan,(a rather sparsely populated area) there was a very avid and well supported hunting and fishing community – many of whom considered themselves subsistence hunters or close to it.

What happens when you get that many people wanting to hunt and “harvest” (I hate using that term in regards to animals) animals, the Department of Natural Resources finds it a good money making opportunity. They require you have a license – which you pay for – this is supposed to reduce the risk of over hunting.

But the DNR becomes habituated to this income and encourages even more hunting. They know that deer, bear and grouse (main “game” species) thrive in young forest so they use this as one of their many excuses to clear cut (on a 30 year rotation) the majority of the forests (which they also make a lot of money on). They clear cut, which promotes game species, which promotes more hunters, which promotes more money and around it goes. What ends up happening is that they are “farming” wildlife – just like we are now farming domestic animals. They are promoting game species at the expense of biodiversity and non game species. We now have a nearly mono culture/even aged forest throughout much of the northern Midwest.

Another thing happens when people get that invested into hunting – they kill predators – coyotes and wolves get shot to make more room for deer – just like farmers shoot coyote and wolves to make room for cattle.

Regarding wild plant food gathering, I’ve had the experience when I lived near N. Wisconsin that berry pickers developed “turf wars” in their best berry picking areas. People practically came to blows over the patches and I’ve even heard of vandalism to pickers vehicles etc. This also happens to prime hunting and fishing areas.

So this proves that we simply have WAY too many people now to go back to any kind of hunter/gatherer existence at this point. And, as you say in your post, since we obviously need to have agriculture to feed this many people the ONLY way to do that and be even close to sustainable is with veganic (plant only) methods.